Indoor lambing preparation

Planning to lamb indoors to save the ground for a few weeks. They are due to start at the beginning of next month, although the first week does not look like it's going to be busy according to the raddle marks. When should I take then inside? Week before?

Planning to lamb indoors to save the ground for a few weeks. They are due to start at the beginning of next month, although the first week does not look like it's going to be busy according to the raddle marks. When should I take then inside? Week before?

Planning to lamb indoors to save the ground for a few weeks. They are due to start at the beginning of next month, although the first week does not look like it's going to be busy according to the raddle marks. When should I take then inside? Week before?

Planning to lamb indoors to save the ground for a few weeks. They are due to start at the beginning of next month, although the first week does not look like it's going to be busy according to the raddle marks. When should I take then inside? Week before?

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Late afternoon on the next dry day this week (best to house dry sheep) would be ideal as long as they are well used to the feeding regime that they will have indoors.
I work on 147 days but thats a good average so one or 2 will possibly come before that time and then you will be chasing around the field to ring and tag them or to catch a ewe with a head out or some other catchable offence....

Sooner rather than later if the shed is ready, you have the bedding ….and you want to save grass...

Depends if they have ever been inside before iv e brought hill ewes inside and it can take a couple of weeks deliberately walking amongst them to calm them down and ive known of people having to kick hill ewes back out as they were climbing up the walls

I try and bring mine in a fortnight before the start date if possible. Allows me to get them crutched and gives them time to adjust to a new diet.

I don’t have any grass by my lambing shed so I can’t just walk them in. I wouldn’t want to be transporting them the day before they were due to start.

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The most important thing is to have them transitioned to whatever ration they’ll be on once housed IME. Any ewes I house these days come in onto ewe rolls and silage. I put a low rate of ewe rolls on the field for a week or so before housing, to get the rumen switching over from the forage only diet they’ll have been on before. Housing is usually as close to lambing as possible, but on a dry day if I can.

As for transporting ewes close to lambing, i’ve Never found it an issue as long as they are used to being loaded/unloaded. I regularly used to trailer weekly lambing batches to the sheds from turnips 2 miles away, as close to lambing as possible (usually one had lambed in the turnip field, so ‘fairly’ close). I never had a problem.
When I moved up here, all the ewes were loaded onto artics, pre-sorted into the lambing groups so that they could be dropped in specific fields. Through necessity, they were moved 91 miles five days before they were due to start lambing. Not a single ewe slipped as a result (which even I was surprised at). If they’re not used to loading/transport/unloading it might be different of course.

Agree about transition to avoid TLD and other stress disorders. Ours come in 1 to 4 weeks before due date depending on weather and field conditions. They will be on round bale hay and silage and molasses outside and will come into the same before transition onto TMR through mixer wagon. Much less TLD and prolapses now compared to when we used to bring them in and feed ewe rolls on the floor.

Ewes that have previous experience of housing will happily waddle in a day or two before lambing and settle immediately.

Ewes, and particularly younger ewes that have not been housed before take much longer to settle. They even take time to get the hang of barging in to the feed boxes, which in itself can cause Twin lamb disease in the ewes that are short changed, and acidosis in the more experienced ewes that get more than their fair share. It's similar to what school dinners used to be like.

It's better to pen the younger ewes separately until they've settled, and then to mix them with the older ewes to help quiet them down ( and make them easier to catch ) when lambing starts.